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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Hedonic Adaptation And The Settlement Of Civil Lawsuits, John Bronsteen, Christopher J, Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur
Hedonic Adaptation And The Settlement Of Civil Lawsuits, John Bronsteen, Christopher J, Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay examines the burgeoning psychological literature on happiness and hedonic adaptation (a person's capacity to preserve or recapture her level of happiness by adjusting to changed circumstances), bringing this literature to bear on the probability of pretrial settlement in civil litigation. The existing economic and behavioral models of settlement are incomplete because they do not incorporate the effect of adaptation on the sum for which a plaintiff is willing to accept an offer. When an individual first suffers a serious injury, she will likely predict that the injury will greatly diminish her future happiness. However, during the time that …
Vote-Trading In International Institutions, Ofer Eldar
Vote-Trading In International Institutions, Ofer Eldar
Faculty Scholarship
There is evidence that countries trade votes among each other in international institutions on a wide range of issues, including the use of force, trade issues and elections of judges. Vote-trading has been criticized as being a form of corruption, undue influence and coercion. Contrary to common wisdom, however, I argue in this paper that the case for introducing policy measures against vote-trading cannot be made out on the basis of available evidence. This paper sets out an analytical framework for analyzing vote-trading in international institutions, focusing on three major contexts in which vote-trading may generate benefits and costs: (1) …